Frost Bitten
by Scrawlix
Summary: On a mission on the frozen Siberian tundra, Black Widow and Hawkeye take refuge in a cave holding an ancient shrine. The consequences of their stay leads them to discover more about each other than they care to know.
1. Chapter 1

Goddamn it was cold. The wind bit through his jacket and seemed to shred through his skin, lodging deep in his bones. Despite the layers that he had on, the assurances from the SHIELD quartermaster that this was the best stuff to protect against the frigid Siberian chill, Hawkeye couldn't believe how goddamn cold it was.

He glanced over at his silent partner who seemed impervious to the cold that was tearing him apart. He could tell, though, that she was struggling to maintain her indifference. Her lips were blue and every once and a while, her chin would quiver like she was clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.

"Wh-when is the fucking ex-extraction scheduled for?" He bit out.

"Not for another four hours." The woman mumbled, pushing the sleeve of her jacket back to reveal her wrist watch. She swore quietly and then looked at him, concern on her face, "We need to get to somewhere safe where we-we can make a fire. We are in real trouble here."

"Recce of the area indicated that there were some caves up in the hills to the southeast of us. They said that there was no indication that anyone lives in them or have stayed in there for quite some time. If we run, we can probably make it." Natasha pulled her white balaclava over her face and tightened the straps on her pack. "What do you say, Barton? Want to race me there?"

From their scant cover, mere scree and the stunted barebones of shrubs, they started out into a run that quickly got them warm enough that thinking wasn't painful. Natasha was already a hundred yards ahead, running quickly around a small hill and towards the looming cliffs. Hefting his bow in his hand, he checked to make sure his arrows were clear of snags from his clothing before following her across the frigid tundra.

Scaling the cliff was dangerous. The wind threatened to yank them off what little footing they could find. "Tell me, why did we think this was a good idea?" He muttered to himself for the fifth time. Natasha was perched on a ledge like a bird, watching his progress from twenty feet up. She had reached the cave, had embedded an anchor into the wall by its mouth and was tieing off rope to lower down to him. Clint looked up at her expectantly and could see her mumbling to herself as her wind chapped hands worked knots. She caught his eye and pulled the last knot tight before tossing it to him.

Just as the rope sailed through the air, the wind picked up and it caught on an outcropping a few feet from his right. Cursing, he shifted his weight to reach for the rope but it was inches from the tips of his fingers. "Just fucking typical." He groused before taking a lunge at the rope. His feet slipped as he moved, hindering his momentum and slamming his side into a jutting rock. His hands grasped the rope and he could feel the palms of his neoprene gloves heat up from friction. Dangling a hundred feet off the ground, Clint gasped for air and fought to maintain consciousness. He had to have broken a rib judging by the amount of pain he was in. "Mother Fucker." He snarled as the wind swung him into the cliff again.

"Are you alright?" Clint heard Natasha ask from her perch. He glanced up at her, her face distorted with concern.

"I'm just fucking peachy." He gritted as he began to pull himself up the rope and towards safety. It was all he could do to keep from passing out, focusing on putting one hand in front of the other, inching up the rock face slowly but surely. When hands reached out to grab him and pull him up the rest of the way, it was almost a surprise. He lay on his back trying to breathe as the pain shot through his side. "Let's go climb a fucking cliff in Siberia in a snowstorm, she said. It'll be fun, she said…"

"Oh shut up. You liked it." Natasha said as she unzipped his jacket and lifted the numerous layers to inspect his side. Her fingers probed gently but it didn't keep Clint from complaining and squirming. "Well, good news is that they aren't broken. Bad news is, you are still a whiner."

"Thanks Nat." He pulled his clothes back in order as she moved deeper into the cave. The ceiling dipped low enough that they had to crouch through. The cave opened up to a larger space where a hole in the ceiling let in the cold air and a bit of light. In the center of the room there were charred remains of a campfire. "Looks like we weren't the first ones here."

"It could be one of the native tribes that roam the area." Natasha offered as she sifted through the ashes with a toe. "Unfortunately, I don't think there is enough in this cave for us to get a fire going. At least we're out of the wind."

Finding a spot on the ground, he settled down and pulled his pack off his back. "I've got some MREs in here somewhere." He muttered as he rooted around in the bag.

Natasha walked around the cave, inspecting the walls. She stopped, "Hey, come see this."

He got up slowly and hobbled to a dark corner where Natasha stood. "What?"

Her flashlight illuminated a small cranny that seemed to have been rudely gouged out of the wall. In it was a small figurine carved out of bone. "I think this might be a sacred place of some sort." She murmured, leaning in to get a better look.

Something caught Clint's eye. "Look." He grabbed her wrist, pointing the flashlight to a crevice in the wall. "It's just big enough for someone small to slip through."

"You would never have seen this if you were in front of it." Natasha murmured, breaking from his grasp to step through the small niche. "There's a spring on this side but there's not much space. You aren't superstitious about drinking from what might possibly be a sacred spring, are you?"

"Uh… no…" He scratched his head in confusion.

"Okay, good." The woman reemerged with her canteen in hand. He handed her his emptied bottle and she disappeared again to refill.

"Sacred spring water is the best kind of water." He murmured, still unable to shake the uneasy feeling coiling in his gut. He settled against the wall and resumed scrounging through his pack. "Lets eat. I've got SHIELD MREs. Shepherd's pie or beef stew." She sat beside him, crossing her long legs. "Mmm... Delicious." She said dryly.

When they had finished eating and had packed up, Clint lay down with his head on his pack, "You take first shift?"

He lifted his head and cracked an eye, "I cooked."

"You poured water in a bag." She raised an eyebrow but decided not to protest further. He was already snoring.

The beeping woke her from a strange dream. She jerked her head back, cracking it off the cave wall. Hissing a curse, she rubbed her head and nudged Clint with her knee. She first thought he had been using her though as a pillow but he was pressed against her with an arm wrapped possessively around her legs. He nuzzled into her thigh, mumbling sleepily. "Get up. We have to go." She mumbled, feeling disturbed by his closeness.

He raised his blond head and looked up at her, his bright blue eyes were cloudy with sleep. "Hmm..." Clint looked down at her legs and jumped back like he had caught fire. "Jesus! I'm sorry, Nat."

Without speaking, they eased their packs on their backs and tightened the straps. Using the ropes, they rappelled down and were gathering ropes when they heard the sounds of an approaching quinjet. The air seemed to shimmer, the snow swirled and the craft appeared before them. "Now that's service." Clint said happily, grinning as he made his way up the ramp.


	2. Chapter 2

She didn't think it was possible for the cold to ever leave her bones. She had taken a warm shower after being debriefed. Scalding hot coffee that almost blistered her tongue did nothing to shake it. Nor the meal of spicy beef soup and fresh bread that she got from the cafeteria. She had a SHIELD town car drop her off in front of the Stark tower and rode up to her flat, still shivering despite the elevator's hud telling her it was a balmy 72 degrees.

The elevator stopped a few floors below and opened "You don't look too good, Ms Romanov." Tony said as he stepped onto the elevator.

"I just got back from Siberia. I think it's just jet lag and a cold." She said dismissively.

"Well, if you need any… pharmaceuticals, I think I can hook you up. If you agree to be my guinea pig, I'll let you try out my cure for the common cold."

She shot him a skeptical look, "Has it even gone to animal trials yet?"

"No, but I know it'll work."

"How?" Natasha bit out, trying to stop from shivering uncontrollably.

Giving her blank look, he answered as if she had just asked him the stupidest question he had ever heard, "Uh… because I made it."

The elevator slowed, Jarvis's voice announced, "Your floor, Ms Romanov." and the doors slid open with a quiet swish.

"I think I will have to pass. I'm going to take a few days to recuperate and I'm sure I will be fine. Thanks for the offer, though." She backed out of the elevator and waved as the doors closed. A hot toddy and a hot bubble bath followed by a copious amount of sleep in her own bed would do her the world of good. "Jarvis, please run me a hot bath." She called out as she locked the front door.

"There's a phone call for you, Ms Romanov. It's Mr Barton. Would you like me to take a message?"

"No, put him through to my phone." She pulled her phone out and answered the forwarded call, "Hey."

"Hey, how do you feel?" He asked.

"Not good. I think I'm coming down with a cold." She poured herself a finger of vodka and tossed it back. Refilling the glass and juggling it and the bottle in one hand, her phone in the other, she walked into the bathroom where the water was already running for her bath.

"You don't think it could have anything to do with the water we drank, do you?"

She rolled her eyes, "You aren't getting superstitious on me are you, Barton?"

There was a brief pause before he answered slowly, "No… I just… okay, maybe a bit. Wasn't it Stark that said that magic is just science we haven't discovered?"

"Just take a bath, pour yourself a drink and relax. It's probably just exhaustion and a bug you picked up between here and there. If in the morning, we aren't feeling right, I'll send the canteen to Tony to get analysed, okay?"

"Fine." He sighed, "If anything happens and I die, I'm haunting you."

She hung up and tossed the phone on the bathroom counter. "Jarvis, direct all my calls to voicemail. I'm done for the night."

"Very well, Ms Romanov. Would you like me to get someone to pick up the canteen in question?"

"It's stored with my kit back at HQ. If you want to notify an agent on duty to get it delivered to Stark labs but make sure they know its low priority. It's probably nothing." She said as she threw off her clothes and eased herself into the tub.

Natasha jerked awake, confused and scared. She wasn't in the tub anymore. She was laying in a bed. A hospital bed. A monitor beeped steadily in the background. The medical smell of a hospital, the starchy smell of clean linens assailed her senses. She pulled the nasal cannula from her face and began indiscriminately yanking on wires that were attached to various parts of her body. "Lemme out." She mumbled incoherently, wanting to retreat to somewhere safe until she could assess the situation. Until the fog cleared from her brain.

"Ms Romanov, please stay put. You are at SHIELD's hospital lab. You are perfectly safe." A nurse called out. She was wearing white scrubs with the official seal of SHIELD stamped on a breast pocket.

She lunged for the nurse, grabbing her ID from her hip and staring at it. She blinked, trying to get her eyes to focus. It looked official- it all looked official and from this window she could just make out the familiar landmarks that she was accustomed to seeing from the Triskelion. "When did I get here? How?"

"I had you and Agent Barton brought here when you were showing no signs of improvement from Stark Tower." Fury answered as he entered the room with an entourage of surly looking agents. He settled into a chair by her bed and watched as Natasha struggled to sit up.

"I'm so cold." She muttered, hugging her arms around her body. "Why am I cold?"

The nurse picked the blankets off the floor that Natasha had kicked off in her struggles, "I'll get some more heated blankets and hot packs." She turned the monitor off before leaving.

"You have been hovering between mild to severe hypothermia since Jarvis notified Tony about detecting your erratic heartbeat. You have been resuscitated a few times. You and Barton it seems, have a game of who can die the most at any given time."

"Who's winning?" Natasha asked.

"Barton. He's not doing as well as you are."

"Damn. He's never going to let me hear the end of it." She mumbled.

"I am ordering you two to knock it off. I didn't give you permission to die."

She smiled and patted his hand, "Don't worry, boss." The nurse returned, gently placing hotpads between her legs, along her sides and near her neck. Heated blankets were added on top of the blankets already there. Natasha felt her body relax as the woman tucked the ends of the blanket underneath her feet. "Thanks."

"No problem. You have your button in case you need something. I won't be far. I am going to change out your saline soon." The nurse squeezed her knee reassuringly before leaving them alone again.

"Do we know what it is?"

"Jarvis flagged your canteen. It was analysed at Stark's labs and it contained a compound we've never seen before. We're cross checking with our alien tech but so far got no hits and we're trying to get a hold of Thor to see if he's heard of anything like this."

Natasha felt the cold in her bones leech the warmth from her blanket cocoon. She began to shiver again. "I want to see him." Her words sounded slurred and it was difficult to lift her head to look at him, but she did it and held his gaze for as long as she dared.

"I don't see why not. We'll get you two moved to a bigger room." He nodded to an agent who left the room and headed in the direction the nurse had gone

Helplessness and fear coiled in her chest, making her breathless. These were not emotions she was familiar with. "Yes, I want to see him. Someone has got to keep him in check." She said, forcing herself to look at Fury and smile.

"Is there anything else that I can do for you, Agent Romanov?" Fury asked.

"Don't let him die." She whispered softly, closing her eyes to keep the hot tears from spilling down her cheeks. He fished her hand out from the heap of blankets and gave it a squeeze. The warmth from his skin was shocking. She returned the squeeze but didn't open her eyes until he had left the room.

A short while later, she was being moved. They had piled more blankets on top and replaced the wires she had torn off of her body. Clint was already in the room when she arrived. He looked sallow, his lips were blue. He was packed with heating pads and blankets. "Clint…" She called but he was unresponsive.

A weariness settled over her like a shroud. She was so tired. So, so tired. Her eyes slid closed and she heard the faint but shrill alarms from the monitors above her head. It as the last thing she remembered before the sweet dark embrace of unconsciousness enveloped her.


	3. Chapter 3

She was standing in the middle of the cave and she wasn't alone. Clint was there, standing in a dark corner with his back turned to her. He was facing the crude shrine and upon closer inspection, she realized that he was looking down at the little figurine. It was writhing, moving. It wasn't a single piece, but two pieces intricately knotted together that it was hard to distinguish where the one began and the other ended. 

She stood beside him now, having no recollection of how she got there. Her hand was in his, their fingers laced. She watched the figurine writhe, seeing two faces emerge and then subside in a tangle of limbs. Catching glimpses between the gaps, there was a warm spark hidden between the two bodies and the light that spilled out shattered the dark and pierced the cold.

The figures seemed to grow, their knotted limbs moving more furiously. They stepped back, allowing it to fall onto the cave floor. It stood as one lumbering mass. The spark inside grew in proportion, the flashes of light getting brighter and hotter until Natasha was flinching away from the heat.

Then it stopped. The searing pain subsided and she looked at the being that stood in front of her. It looked back with a face that looked like a worn, wooden caricature of her own. Another mask hovered beside it- Clint's. As it started to pull apart, the spark within began to stutter and die.

"Stop." She said but the being didn't listen. It was beginning to tear itself away, limbs snapping. The pain of it registered on its face but it kept going. "Don't!" Clint yelled. The spark was dying and for some reason, she knew it was imperative that it didn't. "STOP!" She screamed but it went on, impervious to the harm that it was causing itself.

"STOP!"

For the second time, she jerked awake in an unfamiliar room. Panic made her breathless and the residue of her dream made her delirious. "STOP!" She screamed, scrambling backwards until her back hit the headboard. She fought blindly against the hands that tried to hold her back but they were no match for her in her weakened state.

"Natasha! Natasha!" She stopped at the sound of the familiar voice calling her name. The sound of his voice sliced through the terror and she stilled. Looking around blindly, her eyes rested on Clint's face. "I'm here. Come back to me." His voice was raspy.

"Clint. Are you- are we- where are we?" 

"You are at the Triskelion hospital lab. Remember? Director Fury had you moved here so we could find a cure for the problem you two are suffering from." It was another familiar voice- the nurse that had been in her room when Fury had visited.

"How long have I been out?" She asked after being settled back in bed.

"It's been three days since you were brought to us." The nurse informed her, checking her IV line. "I think you were at Stark Tower for around a week before that."

"How long have you been up, Clint?" She glanced at him, he looked so pale against the white hospital sheets.

"Agent Barton has been awake for a few hours now. We're just grateful the arrhythmia seemed to sort itself out around the same time the two of you were put in the same room." The nurse commented. "I'm going to go and inform the doctor that the two of you are awake. I'm sure they'll have some questions for you."

The doctor was a short, wiry man with a buzz cut. He wore gold rimmed glasses and was dressed impeccably. "Let's get started, shall we?" He declared in a crisp southern English accent. "We haven't been able to identify what was in the water that you two drank. All we know is that it has completely embedded itself within your system- even your DNA was slightly changed by its presence."

"But we're better, right? We can get on with our lives, right?" Natasha asked.

Clearing his throat, the doctor answered, "You are better but it's still in your system. It is not showing any signs of degradation despite your rapid recovery. I suspect-"

"How can we control our body temperatures so we don't die?"

Clearing his throat again, the doctor went on, "I suspect that it has something to do with your proximity to one another. It's just a theory at this point, I'm waiting for the bloodwork to confirm." 

"Are you kidding me? We're stuck together-" The woman asked, her eyes narrowing and the corners of her mouth twitching.

"It can't be that bad, Tash. Until they figure out what's wrong, we might as well stick together."

"No. No." She felt cornered. She cared for Clint, truly but she knew all of his flaws and all of his weird tics and issues. Every single one of his disgusting habits was a personal pet peeve of hers. They were soulmates in the field but in a personal setting… if she didn't end up strangling him with his dirty underwear by the end of the second day, then it would be the first miracle she would witness. "How far apart can we be without incurring the side effects?"

"It'll be fun." Clint ran a hand through his blond hair, "Just like Budapest all over again."

"You and I remember a different Budapest." She shot him a dark look.

Clearing his throat loudly, the doctor waited for the two to stop arguing. "Now, I don't know how far you can go without dropping from hypothermia. I guess it will fall on deaf ears if I ask you not to push it."

"Clearly. Doc, we'll take it from here." Tony strutted into the room with Bruce following. "We'll take you back to Stark tower and get started on an antidote."

"I think they should stay here where we can run tests on them." The doctor interjected.

"No tests-" Natasha snapped.

"We'll run tests back at Stark labs." Tony offered the doctor a wide smile, "You're welcome to join us but if you aren't a card carrying member of the avengers initiative, you'll have to put in the correct paperwork and get vetted and then there's orientation and-"

The doctor held up a hand, "Please, Mr Stark, stop."

"I know that it's a lot but there are procedures and safety protocol- I promise it's all very necessary." He rambled on, "I bet by the time you get through it all, Agent Romanov and Agent Barton will be as right as rain and we'll have this all behind us." He clapped his hands together and from seemingly nowhere, a group of suited men appeared with clothes for both Natasha and Clint.

"Are you sure you can find the cure for this?" Clint asked, opening a duffle bag that was placed on his bed. Natasha stepped into the bathroom to change.

With a one sided shrug, Tony turned and walked out of the room- gone as suddenly as he had appeared. "Yes, I think we can." Bruce said quietly, glancing up from the clipboard he had taken from the end of Natasha's gurney. "It'll just take some time. As far as we know it isn't Asgardian or anything in our alien database. We've contacted Dr. Strange and he's gone to have a look at the shrine which has been cordoned off by SHIELD. If it's mystical, he'll know what to do." He replaced the clipboard.

Natasha came out of the bathroom dressed in scrubs and sneakers. "I'll feel much better once I'm home." She sat on the bed and tried to take deep, even breaths. The sickness had made her weak but she wasn't about to admit it to anyone. Glancing at Clint, he was pale lipped and sweat rolled down his face. He wasn't much better.

"You guys need wheelchairs." Bruce walked towards the door, stopped and turned, "No offence…"

Shaking her head, Natasha offered him a smile, "It's alright, Doc. If it means getting out of here, I'll take it."


End file.
